Drinking Water: Do you trust your tap?

Posted on October 18, 2008 by michelle.mack

Photo: bfurnace on Flickr

I’ve been thinking about this lately: Am I alone in my distrust of my municipal drinking water?

My hesitance in guzzling the seemingly harmless water that flows freely from my tap began when my son was born, two and a half years ago. Until then, I didn’t care one way or the other. I drank almost exclusively tap water except for the bottled water I got for free at work (we had a bottled water sponsor at the time) and the bottled water I’d buy if I was out or going camping. That was about the extent of my bottled water use.

When my son was born, however, I began to question the safety of the water I’d taken for granted all my life.

I attended weekly Mom & Baby Drop-In sessions offered by North Shore Coastal Health each week while I was on maternity leave. I pretty much went every week for the year. Not only was it a great place to meet other new moms, but it was a place to get breastfeeding advice, speak to community health nurses about whatever questions I had, and listen to lectures on scheduled topics each week. One of the topics I discussed with the nurses was the safety of water for my newborn.

My son was not exclusively breast fed; he was supplemented with a little formula. Now formula can be purchased as a ready-made liquid or a powder form. The liquid, however, is rediculously expensive as compared with the powder (which isn’t cheap either – a full time formula-fed baby can go through $40/week in formula alone and that’s if they don’t need a specially formulated one i.e. soy-based or whatever). So for those of us who felt EI Mat Leave benefits were a bit of a hit to the pocketbook, we needed to mix powder with water.

Now, the nurses at the drop-in sessions said that babies shouldn’t have tap water until they’re at least 4 months old and their immune systems can handle it. Now I can’t quote exactly who said that and when, but that’s what I was told at the time. That didn’t really make me feel better about using it beyond 4 months either, to be honest. I mean, my kid’s immune system is nearly the same at 3 1/2 months as it is at 4 1/2 months, surely.

I decided to use bottled water at that point because it just seems cleaner (though the Mayo Clinic says you should also consider boiling bottled water before giving it to a baby) . I mean, my pipes in my building are 35 years old and my municipality’s pipes are probably nearly 100 years old. They can’t be all that clean inside, can they? I’ve caught glimpses of the water mains when you drive by a hole in the middle of the road where the crews are digging and those giant mains have buildup in them… just like mineral deposits in the inside of caves. The problem is I don’t really know what made those deposits. Plus, there are reports of stuff in our water I don’t particularly want there. For instance, in March of this year, CNN reported finding prescription drugs in tap water across the US. That’s kind of scary.

So anyway, I am a bottled water advocate. Does that mean I won’t touch tap water? Of course not. But I buy bottled water for regular use at home and don’t feel quite right about giving the tap water to my kid. What does that say?

What do you think? Do you trust your local tap water? Is it municipal or well? Do you drink bottled water? Am I being crazy about this?

Lost in busy-ness

Posted on October 17, 2008 by michelle.mack

Photo: extranoise on Flickr

This week, being Thanksgiving and a short work week, was super busy. Not only that, but I didn’t even get to doing half of what I’d hoped to do.

Election Tuesday

My cold has still been kicking my behind, particularly at night – I’m still coughing like crazy (it’s all very attractive), and so I didn’t go to my kickboxing class Tuesday evening. Instead, I left work early to cast my vote and then went for a walk around my neighborhood to take photos for Urban Shore. I then after mini-man was in bed, I watched the Canadian election results to find that we have managed to elect pretty much the same government we did last time.

Fellowship Wednesday

Wednesday after work, big-man and I went to a home church group for our Passport – Life in the Kingdom study we’ve been doing. It was really nice to get into a small group again; it’s been a long time since we’ve participated in one. I’m reminded of how important fellowship is to a Christian’s spiritual journey. Just hanging out with other believers is super encouraging and I’m always surprised (though really I shouldn’t be) to find out everyone is just as messed up as we are.

Social Thursday

Thursday after work I attended Ideas On Tap at the Yaletown Brew Pub. It was very loud and crowded. I’ve become quite the home body myself, opting to spend time in more intimate settings whenever possible. It was decent, though. I met a few nice people and had a chance to chat again with some people I’ve come to know over the last few months. It was interesting hearing what everyone is working on, but I’m still shocked at how many technology folks are developing tools because they can and pitching them to business rather than taking a business problem and solving it first. Their way means they first have to convince the business owner/manager that they have a problem and then show them how they can solve it; the latter just means they present a solution to a problem everyone already recognizes… way easier. But anyway, it was pretty fun. I might not go every month, but I could go again.

TGI Friday

Today at work I had a great day. I had a nice meeting with my rep from Canwest about integrating more online advertising into my TV and print mix; spent a bunch of time working with my other team members on a huge presentation regarding the bottled vs. tap water debate; and reviewed a bunch of ideas for mobile marketing and mobile web development that I’m working on. It was, well, a Friday… and fairly relaxed today. I did, however, get to hear all about my boss’ trip to India to participate in Habitat for Humanity. He just got back yesterday and his stories were pretty mind-blowing. He told of a class system very much alive and well and children playing in sewage. I would have had a very hard time with that, I admit.

I’m glad it’s the weekend. I can get on with some more blogging; I am leading worship at my church this weekend (and, thus, a rehearsal Saturday and 6 hours of church on Sunday) and get to spend time with my family. It seems life keeps getting busier and busier. As it does, it’s important to spend time on the people that matter most.

Gratitude: a moment of reflection

Posted on October 13, 2008 by michelle.mack

Photo: mysza831 on Flickr

This weekend presents one of the most interesting Thanksgiving weekends for me probably ever. I’ve been in tough spots before, but the current global economic situation coupled with my husband having recently been laid off (because the banks have pulled funding for real estate high rise construction), leaves me really contemplating what I am thankful for this year.

Firstly, I’m thankful that there is a God, and He’s the God who created heaven and earth. The God who sent His Son to die for me.

I’m thankful for my family. I’m thankful for my husband – a man with the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met. A man who would move heaven and earth for his family if he needed to. A man who loves me despite my shortcomings. A man who has been through many challenging situations in this life and who has pulled himself up out of the muck and made something wonderful.

I’m thankful for my beautiful son. I’m grateful every day that God let us keep him in that very dark moment when he was just 5 weeks old – a moment forever burned in my memory. I’m thankful for every moment I’ve had to spend with him and everything he’s taught me about me and about humanity.

I’m thankful for my parents who will always be my parents, even without a biological tie.

I’m thankful for my mother in law, who has built a special bond with my son, and without whom my life would be very different.

I’m thankful for my home. As much as I complain about how little space we have, I’m thankful that I can live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. I’m thankful that we have a roof over our heads and that our son has his own room. I’m thankful that we have extras like TV and internet and phone service. I’m thankful that we have clean running water and enough food.

I’m thankful for my brother and sister-in-law, my other sister-in-law and my biological half sister and grandmother. I’m thankful for my friends, who care enough to share their lives with me.

I’m thankful for my job. I’m thankful that Della and Stuart McLaughlin, owners of Grouse Mountain, have allowed me to continue to learn and flourish and grow and contribute and help in some small way to continue to evolve this amazing thing they have worked so hard to build. I’m thankful that they’ve taken so many chances on me and that I’ve come through it all with a better understanding of myself, my skills, my talents and abilities, my likes and dislikes and my value as a professional.

No matter what happens… I’m blessed beyond belief. It’s my prayer that I would never forget that.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

About those hometown heroes…

Posted on October 10, 2008 by michelle.mack

Yeah, saw them again tonight. Some crazy guy in my building forgot he was cooking and when he realized he was on the verge of burning down the entire building, decided to close the doors, stay inside and hope the smoke would somehow go away and no one would notice.

Meanwhile, his alarm is ringing, the building alarms are going and I’m sending big-man to check out what’s going on while bundling up mini-man in a blanket (who had been asleep for 2 hours or so at this point) and scooping him up for a little walk in the fresh fall air.

Thank God it wasn’t raining tonight!

Anyway, the fire is out. The smoke is being blown out of the building. Hopefully crazy man is being treated to a nice room with a soft wall panelling and we were all allowed back in within about half an hour. Interesting night, though.

A special thanks to my hometown heroes

Posted on October 9, 2008 by michelle.mack

Today I was out grabbing a few groceries after work with my two year old. Across the street from the grocery store we visit is the local fire hall. Now as we were leaving the grocery store I heard the fire trucks making some noise – they seemed to be testing stuff. Garage doors were opening and closing, sirens were popping on and off… so this, of course, was all very attractive to a two year old boy.

So we stood watching from across the street for a little bit, hoping the trucks would make an appearance, but it turned out they weren’t going anywhere. But then there was a bunch of firefighters standing in one of the garage doorways (I think there are 4 of them in a row – the garage doors, not the firefighters)… anyway, I asked mini-man if he wanted to go and say hello. Of course he was excited and skipped and pranced down to the crosswalk while urging me to run to speed up the process.

I’m not sure if it’s just my local firefighters or emergency personnel everywhere, but the members of North Vancouver City Fire Department are some of the nicest guys anywhere. They were all super friendly and encouraging; they even suggested we go in one of the trucks and look around, which we did. The guy who showed us into the truck headed off somewhere saying he’d be back in a minute, and mini-man, being two, decided it wasn’t quite as cool as he’d thought it would be (new and strange environment and all) so we exited about as quickly as we’d entered.

As we were walking down the street I heard a whistle and turned around to see him running down the street with a little red fire helmet (or do you call it a hat?!) for mini-man… that was SO nice of him! Mini-man was super excited and very cute saying “Thank you so much!”

Now I know these guys have much better things to do than entertain me and my kid, but I’m grateful for that. It shows how caring they really are. So next time they’re hauling my husband out from behind our building after he falls off the balcony, or the next time they’re hacking up my balcony with an axe because my husband lit it on fire with a cigarette butt (yeah, both have happened in recent years), I’ll remember what a treat we had this one day. Thanks.

Work Life Balance and other Impossibilities

Posted on September 12, 2008 by michelle.mack

This week has really put me to the test. Every time I’m faced with sick-kid scenario, I find myself questioning everything about my life, the validity of my job, my value as an employee, and most of all, my worth as a mother.

I got a call from the daycare on Tuesday noon-ish that mini-man had woken up with a fever of nearly 107 degrees. I immediately packed up in the middle of lunch with a friend, threw my laptop in my bag and ran out of the office. I took mini-man to the emergency room only to be told it’s probably a viral infection and to just give Tylenol until it goes away. Other than the fever, he seemed perfectly normal… not even a runny nose. Anyway, by Wednesday morning the fever had broken and he seemed almost back to normal. I tried working from home that day as best I could, but eventually had to get out in the afternoon if only for a walk to the pharmacy and a stop by the little playground near our home.

Working from home with a 2 year old is next to impossible. I think all those people out there who do this regularly either have a nanny in the house or they’re not getting a lot done. Every two minutes it’s “Look! Mommy look!” Or, “I need help!” And, yes, everything is an exclamation. All I can really get done is look through my email, send a few files here and there as people request, and delegate a good deal. Microsoft Outlook Web Access is awful and times out every 10 minutes or so it seems; it doesn’t allow me to open an attachment without saving it first to my local machine and then opening it from there, which adds time to everything I do. Furthermore, half my working files are actually sitting on my network at work, so I can’t access all the things I usually can.

I really have a hard time with this. I really take pride in being very good at my job, so when I can’t do it to the best of my abilities, I get really down. To make matters worse, I have some kind of deep seeded issue which makes me want approval from everyone around me, so God forbid I let anyone down. You might as well tie bricks to my feet and throw me off a bridge. Incidentally that’s the same reason I do all sports alone… I hate the possibility that I might slow anyone down, so I just do what I do by myself. So being out of the office is hard. I know it puts extra pressure on the other members of my team – both above and below me. Being a perfectionist doesn’t help either. In many ways it’s what makes me good at my job, but it also will likely send me to an early grave.

When my head starts spinning about how ineffective I am in my job while taking care of the most important blessing in my life, I start questioning my worth as a mother. Why do I worry so much about work… shouldn’t my head be on this little man I’m tasked with raising – teaching to be a human being? What am I teaching him? Am I teaching him that work is more important than family? Am I teaching him that a person is supposed to spend all day in front of the computer or the TV? Am I teaching him that he’s not important enough?

When push comes to shove, my family is more important than my job. There, I said it. If you were considering asking me to work for you but you changed your mind when you read that, fine by me. I really do strive to find a balance in my life… balance between solo time, family time and work time. I need time where my family gets my undivided attention. I need time to hang with friends and time to exercise and play music. I need time to live my life and time to share it with others. As it is this week I ended up skipping my measly two workouts I usually fit in so that I could spend additional time working when big-man came home to occupy mini-man, but I can’t and won’t dedicate my life to a cubicle.

Now mini-man isn’t cleared to return to daycare until Monday, so we’re making the most of it…

Yeah, he looks real sick to me.

I’d love to hear how other people are achieving this somewhat elusive work-life balance I keep hearing about… especially working moms. How do you do it?

Sweet Serenity

Posted on August 30, 2008 by michelle.mack

Big-man has taken mini-man on his first guys weekend. They’ve gone with a friend of ours and his two boys camping at Cultus Lake. Big-man is much braver than I; the thought of taking a not-quite-two-an-a-half year old camping for 3 nights scares the you-know-what out of me. It sounds like WAY more work than I’m interested in taking on, but then I’ve always been a little on the selfish side.

While they’re off galavanting around the lake, the woods and the water slides, I get a weekend to relax and recharge my mommy batteries.

Today is Friday evening and I have enjoyed sitting to watch the evening news while eating take-out sushi (the sushi isn’t unusual, but the news is – big-man can’t stand watching anything to do with what’s going on outside our apartment… I have yet to figure out why that is). I have also completely cleaned up and re-arranged mini-man’s room, gotten rid of a garbage bag full of my old clothes, cleaned and moved a few large toys that I’ll take to a friend this weekend, and listened to Hillsong United with Brooke Fraser singing Hosanna over and over again:

Tomorrow I plan to sleep in until at least 6am and then do whatever I want for the rest of the weekend

Unconditional Love, yes. But unconditional respect?

Posted on August 28, 2008 by michelle.mack

A book review and a concept to ponder…

Okay, the truth is this is not really a book review per se, but definitely a concept to ponder from the book I’m currently reading. I know, I know I said I have the attention span of a flea… truth is it is VERY rare for me to read entire books. I’m more of a blog, newspaper, magazine-if-I’m-bored, rss feed kind of reader. But every so often it’s nice to curl up in bed and read something of the printed and bound variety.

I’m currently reading Love and Respect: The Love She Most Desires; The Respect He Desperately Needs, by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs. It’s based on the theory that what men and women actually need out of a marriage differs. Now, you might think, “Well, duh!” But the truth is, as humans, we generally try and offer people what it is we want from them, rather than offering them what they need. The result is that each can be left without the fulfillment they’re seeking and, thus, the painfully high divorce rate.

The foundation of Dr. Eggerichs’ theory comes from scripture:

Ephesians 5:33 states: “Nevertheless, each individual among you also is to love his own wife even as himself, and the wife must see to it that she respects her husband.”

When I got married, I thought what we were doing was committing to living together because we loved each other. What I didn’t realise at the time, is that God’s plan for marriage involves more than that. Firstly, the commitment is not to exist in the same space with one another, but to act. The commitment is to act with love towards one another, whatever form that really needs to take and so I’ve recently decided to dive in to figuring out exactly what that means.

The Ephesians passage above is interesting. Notice it doesn’t say the wife is to love her husband. Huh. Men are commanded to love their wives as he loves himself! Wow. That’s quite a tall order. But women are commanded to respect their husbands.

The truth is, we women and society as a whole, really expect unconditional love from our husbands. We believe its our right… whether we get ugly or fat or don’t keep the house well enough, don’t earn enough money, don’t dress nicely or use enough wrinkle cream… we expect our husbands will love us no matter what. Unconditional, right?

Well what about the concept of unconditional respect?

Often we consider respect to be something a person earns by making right decisions, doing the right things, saying the right things. That’s how a person earns respect, right? It can’t just be given no matter what, right? Well, it would seem that’s exactly what this scripture is saying. In the same way that women are still worthy of love from their husbands no matter what they do or how they behave, our husbands are worthy of our respect for who they are as individuals whether we agree with all their decisions, actions or convictions or not.

It’s a great book and I would highly recommend it to anyone trying to figure out why their marriage isn’t exactly what they signed up for. It’s funny how more and more I find the words written in the bible just make sense when put into practice. Ironic?

Just a thought to ponder…

The Registration Frenzy

Posted on August 21, 2008 by michelle.mack

Do you ever have one of those moments you regret instantly? Those ones that usually involve a ‘send’ button? Yeah, I had one of those yesterday.

Any mothers in North Vancouver know what I’m talking about… it’s North Van Rec Registration Day. Now I am the first to admit we here in North Vancouver have one of the best, most comprehensive, recreation commissions anywhere. We have access to a host of programs across a wide range of facilities, all at prices that are highly subsidised by our local government. It’s accessing those programs that can be a bit tricky.

The Fall Leisure Guide comes out early to mid August every year and showcases the myriad programs available for September through December. Well this year the magic date was August 20th: the date when registration began for the aforementioned programs.

Big-man and I decided we needed to get mini-man back into swimming lessons. He’s quite the swimmer now – able to swim unassisted with water wings on and will willingly put his face in the water and blow bubbles. He also will swim under the surface of the water from one of us to the other and will jump in and swim up to the surface on his own (okay end bragging here). Now because he’s still under 3 (he’s actually a little under 2 1/2) he has to be in the parent participation program: Tiny Splashers. We decided, along with my mother-in-law (hereby referred to as ‘Nona’) that he would take a weekly lesson with Nona. As such, I ended up having to brave the repeated redials in order to get him in for the desired day/time slot.

I started calling at about 6:58am. Dial, busy signal, disconnect, talk, redial, busy signal, disconnect, talk, redial… I finally got through and put on hold at about 7:07. I was excited it hadn’t taken as long as I’d thought it would, though 10 minutes of dialing feels like longer than it is. So there I was trying to get dressed while holding a phone to my ear and listening to CBC radio (couldn’t they pick something a little more upbeat at that time in the morning?!), trying to fix lunches and get mini-man breakfast. That’s a lot of multi-tasking. Not only that, but I was also trying to speed up the process by refreshing their online registration system in order to see if I could get in faster that way. Every couple of minutes a voice would come on saying something to the effect that they appreciate my business and that I’d be served faster if I hold rather than dialing back. About 7:22 it happened…

I heard an awful clicking sound and my heart sank. I got hung up on. I mean, it even sounded like someone picked up my call and put the receiver down on the base… no joke. I lost it. I can’t even explain how angry I was in that very moment. I’m ashamed, really. So what do I do? I go online. I go to their “contact us” page and find a form.

I have to say, that level of anger is not a good thing to have when writing an email that someone is going to actually receive. I do believe I didn’t use any profanity, but I really came off as a jerk. Not only that but the moment after I submitted the message I got through to their online registration form and was finished about 5 minutes later.

Once the registration was over, I had forgotten about being disconnected. I was just happy the entire process was over and in only about a half an hour… not too bad all things considered. It was only later that morning while sitting at my desk at work did I remember what happened. Actually it was upon receiving a phone call that I suddenly became keenly aware of what a jerk I’d been. “Hello…” I answered. “Hello. This is Ann Greenwell calling from the North Vancouver Recreation Commission…” oh no! I’d forgotten… Not only had I been extremely rude in my email to them, but the woman calling me used to be a business connection of mine when I used to place advertising in the Leisure Guide. Oh no. I don’t know if she remembered me or recognized my name and/or phone number, but that just goes to show you should really think twice about voicing your opinion in the heat of the moment.

Lesson learned. Hopefully…

Anniversary Weekend

Posted on August 20, 2008 by michelle.mack

August 14th was our 4th wedding anniversary. We were married on the anniversary of our first date, 5 years earlier, so it’s really easy to remember yay! This year big-man surprised me with a lovely overnight away to the most unusual spot: The Silver Reef Casino just outside Bellingham, WA. I actually think it’s technically in Ferndale, but that doesn’t really matter. You might think that sounds like an odd plan, but for us it was perfect.

It was a simple plan: son at the mother-in-law’s, drive down Saturday morning, enjoy some spa treatments, a little gambling, a nice dinner and some more gambling and more spa treatments, and then back on Sunday. It was very well planned and I have to give props to big-man. He’s never been good at surprising me with anything. In 9 years he’s never managed to actually surprise me on my birthday, Christmas or our anniversary. This, at least, he had planned entirely up until about two weeks prior when he finally broke down and told me the plan haha… yeah, we’re still working on the *surprise* element of gift giving.

So here’s how it went…

We left our place about 8:00am Saturday. Given we’re up daily by 5am, that was no big deal. We had coffees in hand and a few things packed. It was a beautiful morning so we took off without the front panels on the Jeep (we have a hard top 4-door Jeep like this one where the top pieces just above the front seats come off independently from the rest of the hard top) and left them at home (more about that later).

Here’s how it looked coming in to Vancouver from the North Shore:

And this was me all excited taking a pic of myself – yep I’m a big dork:

We then proceeded to accidentally follow Granville all the way in to Richmond instead of switching over to Oak to get on to Hwy 99… oops! So we had a nice little tour of Richmond before we finally hit the last stretch to the border. At the border we hit the duty free for big-man’s necessities (read: booze & smokes) before we got to join the 90-minute queue of travellers trying to navigate their way to the U-S-of-A.

Anyway, after the 90 minute wait, lots of pee-pee breaks, the odd tweet and some good quality time, we were through the gates and on our way. We stopped for a quick breakfast at Jack In The Box and then arrived at the hotel at about 11am. Perfect timing.

Actually, the timing was good. They had our room ready even though check-in wasn’t until 4pm or something. We had an executive suite on the top floor so there was a little extra security – you had to have a key to a 6th floor room to get the elevator to go there. Big-man had even managed to get the hotel staff to pick up a bottle of sparkling wine he knew I’d like and a long stemmed rose and have them leave it, with a card he sneaked in to them, on the bed in our room. Nice touch.

Pardon the bottle of tequila. That was from the duty free. Newest favourite drink is Blue Agave Full Throttle with tequila *mmm*.

So 11:30am Saturday the first item on the agenda was a couples’ massage at the spa. It was good. The massage itself was good, anyway. The guy who was working on me started talking about how he divorced his wife for her putting her cold hands on him to warm up. A little inappropriate given it was our anniversary, but whatever. The Silver Reef is certainly not high end, despite what they’d like to think. At least the price isn’t high end either lol.

After the massage we shared our bottle of sparkly. That’s all I’m saying there…

Around 1:30 we went for some lunch at Panasia. The thing we started to notice about this ‘resort’ (and I must use the term lightly, it is actually a hotel and casino in the middle of a series of fields on a native reserve…) is that no one knows anything about anything that isn’t part of their job. The hostess knew nothing about the beverages offered, nor did she know anything about the voucher thing we got with our room key. All she knew how to do was seat people at the table. The server on the other hand, knew about the beverages and the voucher, but didn’t know what came with our food. We ordered a spicy duck dish that was supposed to come with little pancakes to roll it up in and she was very shocked that we would imply there should have been something else. No harm done. The food was okay. Not great; but okay.

After lunch I quickly threw $150 in the toilet. Well, I might as well have done so at the rate I lost it at the casino. At that point I wasn’t having much fun, but big-man was enjoying himself, so we stuck around. When he was up a little, he gave me another $100 which I promptly handed over to the 4-card poker dealer. My excuse is that I was training for Las Vegas when I go to Blogworld next month. Meh. Truth is, I was training my self control from that moment on. I draw the line at $250 without winning a single hand.

Big-man made up for my losses at the tables and we got all prettied up and went for dinner at the Steakhouse.

Big-man, having spent many years in the restaurant industry in both the front-of-house and the back-of-house, was excited about table-side food prep. We ate Caesar salad (prepared tableside), he had a pepper steak (prepared tableside) while I had a lobster bisque and, for dessert, we had bananas foster (you guessed it, prepared tableside). Big-man bitched about the wine service (his glass emptied twice without being refilled promptly or, better still, beforehand), but over all he’s just a tough cookie to please. I thought it was fine.

After dinner we returned to the casino where our final tally was me down $300 but big-man up $600. I took a photo of him rolling in the cash on the bed (which is pretty funny) but given he was in his underwear by that point, I figured I’d spare him. Some things are better left private. After deciding to quit while we were (collectively, anyway) ahead, we went for a swim and a hot tub before retiring to the room to watch the Olympic coverage on TV.

Sunday morning we got up and had some really bad coffee. Okay, admittedly I’m a coffee snob. We use a French press at home and use 5 heaping scoops of espresso roast for two mugs of coffee, so hotel coffee just can’t do it for me. Big-man had decided to have another massage Sunday morning given he’d enjoyed the first one so much. I, on the other hand, decided to drive in to Bellingham to look for some real coffee… a Starbucks perhaps?

It was then that I realised it was raining. Remember that nice weather I’d said we had? Remember how I said we’d gone with the tops off the Jeep? Remember how I said we’d left them at home?! Yeah. Nice. So I’m driving down I5 towards Bellingham in the rain, with my hood on, in search of the happy green circle. I finally spotted one Starbucks just as I was passing it with absolutely no hope of doubling back. I kept going to Bellis Fair… found a McDonald’s but that was definitely not what I wanted. So I decided to drive around some more…

I found the strangest thing: right beside Cost-Cutter was Christ The King Church. No joke. A big church in a mall… it was really weird. I’d planned to miss church that morning, being out of town and all, but then I felt compelled to drive right by the front door… 8:30am service. I checked the clock: it was 8:27am. Now I know when God is talking to me. “Don’t miss church. You soooooo need a little godly influence don’t ya thing?! You already threw away the money I provided for you playing stupid gambling games, don’t you think you ought to think about me just a little while you’re immersed in all things worldly? Besides, you’ll like it.” Yes God. I went in.

It was like violins started playing… as I walked though the door the first thing I saw was an espresso bar. Sweet. Then, I met a woman who works in the children’s ministry and gets espresso vouchers for doing so. She was happy I’d dropped in and gave me one. Score! Thanks again, God. I finally make my way in to the sanctuary, wondering if people were frowning upon my attire: yoga pants, a hoodie and flip flops (my usual any time I’m not at work), just in time to see the pastor come in… wearning flip flops. FTW!!

After the service I had just enough time to get back to the hotel, get changed and have a swim and a steam before my mani/pedi appointment at the spa – my final pampering of the weekend.

The drive home was quick; just 10 minutes at the border. We were home by just after 3pm sitting by the pool at the mother-in-law’s hanging with our mini-man, who we missed dearly.

It’s really important for us to take time away from the hectic pace of everyday life. This was a nice break. Thanks babe… I love you. Now if we can just focus on not killing each other before we do it again, that would be fantastic.

im.seeking.balance

The Life of Michelle Mackintosh | Faith, Family & Fulfillment

Category Archives: home.life